I have not bought a newspaper since the Iraq War, and I read them with decreasing frequency. They are filled with propaganda, where not with outright lies. Giving money to their owners is in the same class of lunacy as giving bullets to someone who has threatened to shoot you. Giving the time of day to their writers cannot be entirely avoided, but should be given in a manner that brings no additional revenue and no measurable excuse for puffing their circulation. So much being said, I have just looked at this article in The Daily Telegraph: “Without a Tory-Reform pact, we’re sunk.” It is written by Daniel Hannan, a former member of the European Parliament who now sits in the House of Lords. The article is, as its title says, a plea for the Conservative Party and the Reform Party to make an electoral pact.

After his first sentence, he claims:

Deep down, both parties know that their division offers Sir Keir Starmer his only shot at clinging to office. The logic of first-past-the-post is brutal. There is space for one main party on each side of the spectrum. Just as the Labour-SDP split helped Margaret Thatcher, so the Tory-Reform split is an answer to Labour’s prayers.

Like all propaganda beyond the risible, this is a plausible claim. It is refuted, however, by considerations of time. If the next general election were in 2025, there would be room for concern. But Labour won its majority in July 2024. It does not need to call another election until July 2029. In this time, there is good reason to hope that the Reform Party will overtake and replace the Conservative Party. This being so, Mr Hannan’s claim can be read as nothing more than a desperate plea for the Conservatives to be spared the oblivion they richly deserve. He is like a manager of a company that has so far dominated a market with shoddy, overprice goods, and is now pleading with a new and more efficient competitor to enter a cartel agreement that will place a floor under its loss of market share.

Let us consider his further claims:

Supporters of the Conservatives and Reform have the same policy aims: tax cuts, controlled borders, strong defences, less wokery.

This also is true. But what supporters want in British politics is not always what they are given. I cannot be sure that the Reform Party is not another bait and switch scam. But I am sure that the Conservative Party was. I remember the promises we were made at every election since 2010. I will say nothing of the high-tax, high-spending, high-inflation, woke police state that was delivered. I will only suggest that putting a floor under the Conservative vote would be another triumph of hope over experience.

Mr Hannan tries to counter this argument:

A Reform activist, reading the Conservative manifesto, might say, “This is all very well, but why didn’t you do it in government?” Such an activist will not accept that Left-wing civil servants sabotage Right-wing policies, that Covid pushed up taxes, that the courts blocked immigration reform, or that voters, habituated by lockdown to handouts, refused to countenance spending cuts.

Really? “Left-wing civil servants sabotage Right-wing policies.” Who appointed these civil servants? Who failed to sack or suspend them? Who failed to use the unbridled power of a sovereign Parliament and the vast patronage of the British State to bring the machinery of government to heel? Who had fourteen years to try this and to get it right?

“The courts blocked immigration reform.” They did. But who appointed the judges? Who made the laws they used, or allowed these laws to remain in being? What would Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair have done faced with judicial sabotage? What would the Ministers have done if the judges had somehow twisted the laws to relegalise drugs or allow Protestants of good character to buy machine guns?

“Covid pushed up taxes.” No – the Government’s reaction to an outbreak of the sniffles allowed a feeding frenzy of every relevant interest group. The Ministers and their advisers stopped us from visiting our dying loved ones while they were holding drunken parties out of sight.

“Voters, habituated by lockdown to handouts, refused to countenance spending cuts.” The voters want public services that work. How much do these cost? The answer is nowhere near what is spent by the British State. The voters have never asked for Net Zero, war with Russia, continuing payments to the European Union, HS2, lavish and open-ended welfare for illegal immigrants, or any of the other main heads of expenditure.

Mr Hannon might continue by admitting that the Cameron-May-Johnson-Sunak Governments were weak and incompetent, but that the new leadership has learned its lesson. If he did, I would simply state that the fourteen years of betrayal after 2010 were too comprehensive to be explained by personal failure. A better hypothesis is that these were designed to be shake-down governments. The plan was always to promise the earth to growing majorities of the electorate while leaving the actual work of government in the same hands as before – and for the Ministers and their parasites to do well in ways I will not bother describing. This is what the Conservatives did. I will not say that Reform will do better: it is increasingly filled with the same kind of charlatan. But I will say that, returned to office, the present Conservative leaders would be straight back to business as usual.

“Why create a Right-wing party to challenge Badenoch?” Mr Hannon asks right at the end of his article. The answer is that Mrs Badenoch is no more on the political right than I am a vegan. She sat in the most leftist and authoritarian governments in living memory. She voted for Net Zero. She attends meetings of the World Economic Forum. She supports our war with Russia. The truth is that, under her leadership, the Conservative Party will continue its progress towards electoral death. Her only hope is that she can somehow lock the Reform Party into some fetid embrace that will give conservative voters in half the constituencies no meaningful choice.

I am not a member of the Reform Party. I am not even a reliable supporter. My advice to its leadership, though, is to walk away from Mr Hannan’s proposal. It might do well to walk away from him too.

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